The Night They Vanished, page 19
I shake my head and open my eyes, moving away from her to dig into the ice cream. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s clearly not fine,” she says. “You sound angry.”
I clench my teeth and drop the spoon on the coffee table. “It occurred to me… As my evening was getting worse and worse, it occurred to me to wonder if you knew: if you knew about Adam and his bloody website and the fact that my history with Jacob is what gave him the idea in the first place. Because Seb thought it was a good story to tell.” My voice rises as I speak. I can’t look at her.
“I didn’t know,” she says. “Until yesterday. Seb told me last night. Hanna, I promise, if I’d known, I would have told you. I might still have tried to set you up, but I would have told you.”
I believe her. But the sting is still there, stuck under my skin and festering, because Seb told her last night and she didn’t say anything. It’s not that I think she was deliberately holding back, but I think she was waiting until she judged me ready to hear it. She thinks she’s protecting me, I know that, but it still hurts. She stares at me, and I can’t help but relent. This is Dee. I can’t be mad at Dee.
“It’s not just to do with Adam,” I say. “Well, not entirely. I ran into Liam. He was an idiot. As usual. And it was just… too much. On top of everything that’s happened.”
“Okay. I get it. Do you want to talk about it? While we eat all the ice cream?”
I shake my head again, but this time with a smile. “No, really. The ice cream is enough. I do not want to waste a second of my time talking about Liam.”
“Or Adam?”
“I think… I’m sorry, Dee. I know you and Seb trust him, but I just can’t get past the knowledge that all of this has blown up since he came into my life. I know you’re hoping for some kind of happy-ever-after for me, but I don’t think it’s going to be with him.”
She sighs but nods. “Okay. Okay… I’ll back off on that one.” She grabs the spoon and pinches some ice cream before getting up. “I’m just going to put the frozen stuff away. You stay here.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” Dee calls from the kitchen where she’s stowing away the shopping. “Someone’s got to know why your family left Littledean in such a hurry… if in some way it’s related to what’s happening. Other than Stephen bloody Hayes and Jacob’s old friends. One of your stepmum’s church friends, or someone from Sasha’s school…”
“But they wouldn’t tell me, would they? Thanks to Stephen Hayes, everyone in that bloody village knows who I am and that I’m bad news. And they’re not going to speak to the police… Well, nosy sods like Mrs. Thorpe might, but she doesn’t know anything. Anyone who does know something—”
“They might speak to me…” She comes into the room, her eyebrows raised, looking the epitome of goodness and respectability. Jen’s church friends used to love Dee. They’d eye me with suspicion while at the same time beaming with approval at Dee. Yeah, she’s right—even the kids from Sasha’s school might speak to Dee. She has the schoolteacher vibe going on—one of the nice teachers that kids actually like.
“So, what are you suggesting?”
“We both pull sickies from work and we go back. Tomorrow. Without Adam, just me and you. Try again.”
“You’d do that? For me?”
Dee laughs. “It’s not exactly walking into a burning house, Han—it’s being nosy in our old town. I think I can manage.”
Monday 1 p.m.
“This is the third time I’ve been back here in three days,” I say as Dee steers the car into the station car park. “That’s more than I visited in the last two years my family was actually living here.”
“I hear you—you’re not the only one who was happy to leave this place behind.” She fake shudders. “Well, let’s make it third time lucky, then: the visit where we actually find out something of use and then never have to come back again.”
I smile. “Oh, yes please. Let’s do this thing.”
“Right,” says Dee, unplugging her seat belt and opening the car door. “You lurk here for a bit. I’ll start in the café, with some loud questions to see if I get a bite. I’ll save the church as a last resort—churchy types are more likely to close ranks, save the gossip for themselves.”
She pokes her head back in the car before she leaves. “I’ll text you if I find out anything. You can come in and be bad cop.”
I close my eyes as soon as she leaves, hunching down in the passenger seat. Easier to pretend to be asleep than risk getting recognized by someone parking up to get the train or do their shopping in the precinct.
I think I do actually doze off, because it seems like only seconds before I’m jerked awake by my phone buzzing in my lap. I rub my eyes and glance down at the screen. Yeah, I definitely fell asleep because I’ve apparently been here half an hour and managed to miss six texts from Dee:
Scoping out greggs
No luck but got us steak bakes
And a latte
Trying the café
Nice cakes and full of teens and nosy looking types
Bingo! Get over here
I grin as I tap out a quick text reply and get out of the car. I jog across the road, skirting around Greggs and down past the Spar to the café that’s been here forever. Dee’s waiting outside with two girls who could be Sasha’s age, or could be twenty-five. One of them is blonde, the other brunette, but other than that, they could be twins with their matching layers of makeup, thick, dark eyebrows, and straightened-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life hair. They’re also both in matchy-matchy clothes and it’s like a teen uniform: ripped jeans, white trainers, tiny crop tops, and little puffy jackets.
It was a different teen uniform in my day, but the snotty look on their faces is the same as it ever was, as they take in my sad old-lady skinny jeans and crumpled still-half-asleep makeup-free face. Urgh—they’re cool girls. I hate cool girls.
“Han, this is Seren and Carly. They used to go to school with Sasha.”
One of them—Seren, the blonde one—looks me up and down, attention snagging on the tattoo on my wrist and my admittedly rather wildly tangled hair.
“You’re Sasha Carter’s sister?”
“That’s right. And I’m a bit worried about her—I haven’t been able to get hold of her and they left town so suddenly…”
The girls smirk at each other and I clench my fists at my side.
“Yeah, you might want to have a word with her boyfriend about that,” Seren says.
“Boyfriend?”
“Older man—like, way older. Like your age older.”
Oh, right. Ancient, then.
“And very dodgy,” the other one chimes in.
I bite my lip. Sasha? It doesn’t sound right. Sasha was the perfect daughter I never was. Perfect grades, perfect behavior. But then… aren’t I living proof of how there’s only so long you can suppress and repress someone before they rebel?
Here’s another bucket load of guilt to add to my collection. I saw, particularly with Jen, love for Sasha. I believed, with her to counteract Dad’s strictness, that Sasha was better off than I ever was, that Jen had mellowed Dad, that with Jen there, Dad would be so different with Sasha to how he was with me. I let Jen convince me of that—she even managed to persuade him to keep my choice of name, to keep her as Sasha when he wanted something more traditional and Welsh. Was I wrong? Was that just what I wanted to see so I could go off on my merry way assuming all was fine?
But Sasha with a way older, very dodgy boyfriend?
“Yeah—we saw them together,” Seren says, and the smirk has given way to relishing-in-the-gossip full-on glee as she watches my reaction. “We were in the café a few days before Christmas and we saw him first. He came in and got coffees and started talking to Mrs. Brown—she’s a teacher at my little sister’s school—then he went outside, and along came Sasha.”
Mrs. Brown? Oh—oh. That’s Carrie, isn’t it? Mrs. Brown now that she’s married to Lee. A teaching assistant at the primary… I feel sick. It’s Owen King, isn’t it? It’s got to be. But boyfriend? No, no, no.
Or… what if it was Adam they saw Sasha with? I think of him last night, facing up to Liam—a stranger in town would look very dodgy to these girls, wouldn’t he?
But no. Adam was there when I spoke to Carrie. She would have said something if she recognized him… But. She was trying to say something to me, wasn’t she? Before Stephen turned up?
Dee must be wondering the same, because she gets out her phone, scrolls through her photos until she finds one with Adam in it. But both the girls shake their heads when she asks if they recognize him.
“Nah, it’s not him. I didn’t put it together at first, but then we figured out who it was, didn’t we, Ser?” Carly says. “It was the crim who was working up at the holiday park.”
The blonde seems to find this hilarious as the brunette keeps talking.
“Yeah—not only was Sasha Carter shagging the gardener, he was an ex-con.”
“What? Sasha and someone from prison?” I shake my head and actually laugh. Okay, at a push, I could picture Sasha talking to Owen or Adam, especially if they said they were friends of mine, but some stranger, an ex-offender? “No. No way—there is no way.”
“I agree,” Dee says, giving the sniggering girls one of her best cold looks. “I think this really is just gossip. But if the rumors were nasty enough, would it have been enough for your dad to have rushed them out of town?”
I frown. “Yes. Of course it would. Any hint, however outrageous, that Sasha was going off the rails like I did—”
“Hey, it’s not just gossip,” Seren interrupts, sounding all offended. “We saw them together. Draped all over each other. It’s obvious they were together.” She pauses. “That’s what I told my mum, anyway.” She folds her arms. “It’s not my fault Mum decided to warn your dad…”
“You did that?” I say.
“Yeah, well—it was her fault my party got canceled, wasn’t it? She attacked me in class, and I got the blame.” She pushes her hair out of her face. “And it was for her own good, right? He’s a psycho. He shoved me and threatened Carly.”
“Yeah. Her new criminal old man boyfriend is obviously a bad influence,” Carly says. “She was getting as violent as him.”
They’ve both gone all hunched-shoulder, arms-folded defensive. And much as I’d like to have a go at them—God, these little bitches—I do not need to get myself arrested by Stephen bloody Hayes for fighting with two fifteen-year-olds, so I let Dee drag me away, back toward the car.
“Well,” she says as we get back in the car, “at least we know it’s not Adam. He’s definitely not been in prison or ever worked as a gardener.”
“It can’t be true,” I mutter, as Dee hands me a lukewarm coffee and a steak bake in a paper bag.
“There must have been something, though, to fuel the rumors?”
My shoulders stiffen. “What—you seriously think Sasha is going out with someone from prison? And attacking other kids in school?”
“I’m not saying there’s anything in it—but they must have been seen together or something? I don’t think those girls were completely lying.”
I shake my head again. “No. Not Sasha.”
“We should tell DC Norton anyway,” Dee says. “He’ll be able to find out who was working at the holiday camp.” She pauses. “Find out what they were in prison for.”
She’s thinking of those murdered women.
“Look—Sasha would never do that. She is not like me, not at all and—”
Dee turns her head to look at me. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m considering the possibility that if Sasha was seen with a prisoner, an ex-offender, whatever he is, she might not have been with him willingly.”
I suck in a breath and hold it. No. No. If someone had… done something to Sasha, Dad would have gone to the police. He would have… Or would he? The scandal caused by his actions when I was barely older than Sasha… would he exercise more caution this time? Even if this time the crime was real? Surely he wouldn’t risk doing to someone else what he once did to Jacob?
Chapter 28
Sasha—December, two months earlier
I sleep in on the first Saturday after the end of term, coming downstairs around ten. Mum has been busy—instead of decorating for Christmas, she’s been packing everything up ready for our move in the New Year. We’ve never been a mad-about-Christmas family, more conventional and understated, but it’s still strange to see empty shelves and gaps on walls rather than fairy lights and garlands on the nineteenth of December.
But I get a bigger shock when I walk into the kitchen in my flowery pajama trousers and baggy jumper, hair all over the place, to find Owen and Ethan sitting at the kitchen table across from Dad.
My first thought is panic. Ethan has come to tell! Owen must have found out that Ethan took his van. He’s going to tell Dad about the phone, the Facebook messages, me sneaking out… I try to backtrack without Dad spotting me, but Ethan’s face must have given me away because Dad turns and frowns when he sees me.
“Sasha, please go and get dressed.”
“Sorry,” I mutter, turning away with my face burning. Owen’s grinning at me. He must have seen the panic on my face. I hate him so much. I look away, stupidly terrified that I’ll see something familiar in that annoying grin of his.
I pause in the hallway, wanting to hear what they’re saying before I go back upstairs. Just to check neither of them is going to drop me in it. Just to check Owen isn’t going to announce he’s my dad and demand I go and live with him in his flat on the dodgy estate.
And also, because I haven’t seen Ethan since that night in his van. He and Owen have hardly been here, and never when I’m in a position to sneak out to find him.
“I need you to repair the perimeter fence before your contract ends,” I hear Dad say.
Shit. I cover my mouth like I said the word out loud.
“Security will be paramount when the premises are empty,” Dad continues. “So I’d like you to make that a priority.”
I wait, breath held, for Owen or Ethan’s response.
“Sure. I’ll check out what needs doing today, and Ethan will get it sorted for you,” Owen says. There’s a pause. “But I’ll need supplies to fix it if there’s nothing in the shed. I’ll check it out today and drop a list in of what’s needed, if that’s okay? If you approve it, I’ll pick up what we need over the weekend.”
Ethan joins in then. “We can get the fence fixed Monday, so it’s done before Christmas.”
Is it my imagination or did Ethan say that last bit louder than the rest? I feel that surge of adrenaline rising again. Tonight, then. A last chance to sneak out, before the fence is fixed, before we leave here for good.
Sneaking out has become too easy. I have to force myself to stay cautious as I tiptoe down the stairs at a few minutes past two. I try not to think about the fact this is the last time I’ll do it. I try to feel as casual about it as I did about my last day at school, when the teachers were the only ones to bother saying goodbye and to wish me good luck in my new school. Even Emma seemed to have forgotten. She came over to me at lunchtime and I thought she was going to say something. I even reached into my bag, ready to mention my secret phone and give her my number. But she just asked something about the English lesson we had that afternoon, then wandered back to her friends’ table.
But it’s difficult to stay casual with the realization—the acknowledgment—that Ethan, a twenty-six-year-old ex-prisoner, is my only friend.
He’s waiting in a different car this time, a black one that’s basically invisible under the trees. Much more stealth than Owen’s white van. I don’t ask if he has permission to “borrow” these cars. I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to risk going back to prison, so I’m pretty sure he’s not stealing them. And I tell myself he was joking about not actually having a driver’s license.
He doesn’t smile when I get in the car. Neither does he start the engine. And even though we’re not seeing each other like that, not at all, it feels like he’s about to break up with me.
“What’s wrong? No one’s found out, have they? About you meeting me?”
“It’s not that.” He sighs. “Look, I’m sorry, Sash, but I got the number of the person who’s been sending you those messages.”
I look down. My shoes are leaving mud in his friend’s car. “It’s Hanna, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
“I figured it had to be. She still hasn’t texted me. I know that Mum and Dad have both tried to get hold of her as well and she hasn’t returned their calls either. She doesn’t even know we’re moving.”
“I’m sure one of your parents will have left her a message…”
I shake my head. “Dad said not to tell her and Mum would never go against his wishes. But this—I know she’s got her issues with Dad, but I just don’t get it… Why would she be so cruel to me? She knows what Dad’s like, she knows how scared I would have been at the thought of him finding out.”
“Maybe she’s not the person you thought she was. She left you, didn’t she? Went happily off to live her own life. What if she thinks it’s funny? She catches you using her old photo and thinks it’s a big joke to scare you like that.”
His words are like needles under the skin. Especially now that I know she’s my birth mother. “She wouldn’t…”
“How do you know? She left when you were a kid, and she hasn’t bothered spending any time with you since. She could actually be the total bitch she’s rumored to be.” He glances across at me. “What if your dad’s the one in the right here? You told me she got into trouble, that she was forced to leave. What if she caused all that trouble herself?” He shrugs. “Your dad might be right to try cutting her out of your lives and keeping the move quiet.”
I wouldn’t know. Not for sure. Because no one ever told me why she really left. I was told she went off the rails, that she was a troublemaker. I know she had a reputation as a hellraiser, that she—how did Dad phrase it?—brought the police and shame to his door more than once—but the details? No one ever told me. Only the rumors, which were awful, which I chose to believe were only rumors.
